Misadventures of a Model Student

All my life I have been considered a model student. I've made good grades and I've reached for the stars. Another thing I'm known for is being in a revolutionary class. My school is very small; the junior high has a population of 75. This being so we are used to being grouped together.

Another thing you should know about my school is that it has created a tight community. Almost all the Grade 9 students have been learning here since Nursery. Since we have been so close so long, our grade has a little bit of a history. So here it is: The Chronicles of Calgary, Misadventures of a Model Student, Part I.

 In the beginning the cliques were simple, there were the jocks, the dancers, the brains, the class clowns, and everyone else. Best friends stuck together like glue and no one cared what others thought. These were the golden years. And surprisingly, these years were far from uneventful.

Substitute Teachers, Bullying, Murder, and a Knife
Grade 2 was one of those years where our tight knit group was split in two; 2A and 2B. 2A had a really pleasant teacher, she was perfectly sane and not scary at all. 2B was the opposite. I'm pretty sure that teacher had mental health issues. One day a group of 2Bers was looking for the stapler in this teacher's desk. They pulled out a massive knife. Suddenly, the teacher was there to snatch  the knife away and explain he had confiscated it some 50 years ago. It was hard to look at him the same way.

One day the 2A teacher got sick so the two classes were combined into one. Every now and then the teachers would show us videos and hold discussions with the intent of stopping bullying. Unluckily the day the 2A teacher got sick was the day such a discussion was scheduled to take place. Instead of the usual video and discussion we were told the following story:

Once upon a time there was a boy who was bullied. Everyday as he walked home from school the other boys in his class would taunt him and make fun of him. Sometimes they would beat him up. One day those bullies beat him up especially hard. The boy begged them to stop but they mercilessly continued to beat him to a pulp. He died. The bullies panicked; they didn't want to go to jail. In a flurry they decapitated the boy and threw his body in the river to get rid of the evidence. They were eventually arrested. Their lives were ruined forever.

I know for a fact that the majority of the seven year olds there were scarred by that story for years. Personally, I developed a strong fear of decapitation. A friend of mine had nightmares about the story itself. Even the 2Bers were scarred. The story was more disturbing than the average tale of woe.

The teacher stayed at the school another four years before he left the school. To this day know one knows if it was against his will or not.


Stay Tuned next time for The Chronicles of Calgary, Misadventures of a Model Student Part II!